Deliberate Assault

[michaelk]

Greetings,

I recently tried a deliberate assault with the British attacking and the Germans defending. After a discussion with several in the forum I used persistent hits.

The British assaulted with a reinforced motorized infantry battalion plus an attached machine gun company and a company of Matilda tanks.

A flank assault was also part of the overall assault and I used a regiment of M3 Stuart tanks supported by a reinforced infantry company.

Lastly the assault was supported by 4-25 pounder batteries who were assigned to scheduled artillery on turns 3 and 4 in an attempt to crush any enemy hiding on the objective - a village.

The Germans defended with a battalion of veteran infantry and an attached company of 50mm AT guns. In addition, after the British flank assault (tanks) arrived, the Germans could roll to receive a company of PZIIIs (long barrel) as reinforcements.

The battle started with the British hiding their motorized battalion behind a hill in an attempt to avoid long range German machine gun fire while the Matilda's were ordered to surge (kinda) forward.

As the tanks moved toward the objective, they were repeatedly hit with AT fire from 2 previously hidden AT guns but aside from being suppressed were not especially bothered - very tough tanks for the time. 

Oops, I forgot that the British had Recce who were the forward skirmish line desperately searching for the hidden German platoons.

The entire Matilda company stopped in front of the objective (the town) and preceded to use their machine guns to soften and suppress recently revealed German platoons just before the scheduled artillery's arrival. Using the persistent hits rule after 2 turns of intense artillery barrages the front line - 3 German infantry platoons, were knocked out. The British motorized infantry were then ordered to move forward.

It was at this time that the British flank assault arrived. As the Stuarts approached the objective from the east, 2 more AT guns opened fire and quickly eliminated a company of tanks. Not enjoying the attention, the Stuarts decided to withdraw to a safe distance. As the AT guns were protected by entrenched infantry the Stuarts waited for their supporting infantry company to lead the assault on the German infantry and AT gun position. The British infantry couldn't cross the open ground quickly enough however and the flank attack was stalled.

Up until this time the command die rolls were fairly balanced, some successes some failures. The gods of war had a change of heart and for 3 turns in a row the Germans would fail or get one successful command die rolls, while the newly charmed British were successful 3 or 4 times in a roll per command! [fun and frustrating at the same time].

As can be imagined the Germans, when the weight of the British motorized infantry battalion was brought to bear the Germans pushed out of the town. It was a close thing however, as the Germans counter-attacked with 2 reserve engineer platoons. A command blunder ended the counterattack just as it was getting started and the engineers fled toward Berlin or Tobruk or someplace.

The Germans tanks did arrive but ended up being engaged with the Matilda's at close range so it the exchange was a draw and not impactful on the game overall.


British minor victory but a wonderful game.

I have uploaded several images of the game to IMGUR but do not know how to post a link. If someone can provide me that information I will gladly link the pictures. They are more pictures of the miniatures as I didn't really photograph the game. I will remember next time.


Thanks

[paulr]

There is a useful guide to posting images from Imgur here https://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,20026.0.html

Looking forward to the pictures

[michaelk]

Test

[paulr]

    

[Big Insect]

Looking good and it sounds like you had a great game.
Thanks for sharing.
Mark